#TBT: Historic Waverly

This is part of our #TBT collaboration with Historic Columbia + their “Getting to Know Your Neighborhood” series.

This week, we’re in historic Waverly, exploring neighborhood highlights + cool facts. Waverly was established shortly after the Civil War on former plantation land belonging to Robert Latta. It is one of Columbia’s earliest documented suburbs. By the late 1800s, Waverly was home to both white + black working- and middle-class families.

Remember those streetcar lines we’re always going on about? Yeah, they’re back this week. The growth of the railroad and the streetcar made this diverse community more accessible than ever. So integrated with Columbia was Waverly that it was officially incorporated into city limits in 1913. (And y’all remember the fuss put up by Shandon residents.)

As the South became increasingly segregated during the Jim Crow era, Waverly, bolstered by the strength and perseverance of its residents, evolved into a self-contained and self-sustaining black community. As the neighborhood grew, so did the cache of its inhabitants. Many middle- and upper-class African Americans including spiritual, business, academic + professional leaders took up residence in Waverly.

Martin Luther King Jr. Park

Cast your mind back to our Shandon #TBT. Remember the parkland that the was handed over to their neighboring district? That’s Martin Luther King Jr. Park.

Central to today’s Lower Waverly, which surrounds it, the park has been a community landmark for more than 125 years. Initially known as Shandon Pavilion, the land was intended to function as a resort complete with a casino, bathhouses + seasonal sporting activities for tourists. (Downhill skiing, anyone?)

Originally a whites-only recreation area, the green space became available to all citizens following integration. Since then, it has been used as a gathering space for advocates of civil rights and public health. In 1966, an inoculation clinic was held in the park to service the surrounding neighborhood.

Ellington slept here // The Green Book

Traveling for African Americans wasn’t easy in the 1950s and ‘60s. Often families would have to drive through the night or sleep in their cars because motels and restaurants would not serve black patrons. In some towns across the South, it was dangerous for a black family to linger too long, even if they were on their way to somewhere else.

The Negro Travelers Green Book (inspiration for S.C.’s new Green Book of SC mobile travel guide) became a powerful tool for the black community in the 1950s and ‘60s. Listed within its pages were restaurants, shops, hotels, and attractions that welcomed African American patrons. (Cola native Modjeska Simkins owned a Green Book-approved motel in Richland County.)

African American travelers relied on places like the Mrs. S.H. Smith Tourist Home on Pine St. in Waverly to provide shelter. With money from the sale of their father’s plantation land (where part of Lake Murray now rests) sisters Simmie Hiller Smith, a mulatto dressmaker, and Bernice Hiller Fambro had this residence built by 1919.

This property was among a handful of private homes made available to traveling African Americans barred from white-owned motels during the era of Jim Crow. Notable visitors who lodged here included Cab Calloway, Father Divine, and Duke Ellington. Yep, that Duke Ellington.

Palmetto Seafood + neighborhood stores

Unlike many post-World War II suburbs (think Forest Acres or Heathwood), inner ring suburbs like Lower Waverly typically featured corner markets or grocery stores. The vitality of these small businesses, so important to urban communities, is embodied in an enduring Gervais St. landmark: Palmetto Seafood.

Here’s what Palmetto Seafood looked like back in the day ⬇

At the corner of Pine + Gervais, Palmetto Seafood has been synonymous with the neighborhood since July 1, 1961. Current owners Lucius and Addy Moultrie purchased this business in 1997 from its founders, Ralph and Josie Floyd, whose family also established the Cannarella Fish Market + Dixie Fish and Oyster Company in the Vista.

Here’s what Palmetto Seafood looks like now ⬇

Also in Waverly were mixed-use spaces – often families would live above their shops, or would run businesses out of the front of their homes. Nestled within the inner portions of the neighborhood away from Gervais and Millwood, there were other corner stores like Livingston’s Grocery, which shared the two-story building at the corner of Stark + Heidt St. with a barber school.

Good Samaritan-Waverly Hospital

Just as Columbia’s African American population was denied entrance to white schools, movie theaters + public transit, they were also denied access to care at white hospitals. From 1952-1973, many of Columbia’s African Americans sought treatment at the Good Samaritan-Waverly Hospital (2204 Hampton St.).

When it opened, the Streamline Moderne style facility featured state-of-the-art amenities including a pharmacy, two operating rooms, a laboratory, an X-ray room + a 50-bed capacity.

Currently, the site sits vacant. ⬇

The Lighthouse & Informer

...Is the title of the next great spy movie. It’s also the name of one of S.C.’s most influential African American newspapers. It was published at 1507 Harden St. from 1941-1954.

Founded by John McCray as the Charleston Lighthouse in 1938, the paper educated African Americans about the early stages of the civil rights movement.

McCray, who later founded the Progressive Democratic Party in 1944, said the paper was published “so our people can have a voice and some means of getting along together,” and to promote tolerance and cooperation between blacks and whites.

Benedict College

Benedict Institute (today’s Benedict College) was founded in 1870 – with financial assistance from Rhode Island abolitionists Stephen + Bathsheba Benedict – to educate freedmen and their descendants.

Initially, the school offered comprehensive programming across all grade levels – from primary, to secondary, to college. Following a restructuring in 1894, it focused solely on providing blacks access to higher education during segregation.
In 1937, students established a branch of the NAACP here and took part in one of the first Civil Rights campaigns, a demonstration against lynching.

Allen University & Chappelle Auditorium

Allen was first chartered in 1880 as an outgrowth of Payne Institute in Cokesbury, S.C. (est. in 1870 as the “first institution of learning… consecrated to Negro self-activity and Negro manhood in the state of South Carolina”). Like Benedict, Allen offered primary through college-level + law school classes until 1933.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, Allen served as one of Columbia’s centers for civil rights activism. It was in Chappelle Auditorium that regular NAACP meetings were held. Preparation for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education trial happened here. Modjeska Monteith Simkins worked elbow-to-elbow with her male counterparts to break the cycle of poverty inflicted upon African Americans.
Chappelle Auditorium is notable not only for the events within, but for the man who built it. John Lankford, the United States’ first registered African American architect, designed this classically-inspired building between 1922 and 1925.

Modjeska Monteith Simkins’ birthplace

South Carolina’s Matriarch of Civil Rights (y’all remember) was born in Waverly in 1899. She lived at 1215 Pine St. until 1910. Her father, Henry, was an accomplished builder and was responsible for the home’s construction.

Simkins is one of many accomplished African Americans to hail from Waverly. Also born in the district were Matthew J. Perry, the first black U.S. district county judge; Edwin Roberts Russell, a chemist on the Manhattan Project; and George Elmore, a Columbia business leader and civil rights activist.

In 1992, following her death, Simkins received the Order of the Palmetto for her distinguished career as an educator, journalist, businesswoman, and life-long champion of civil liberties.

How ‘bout this weather? Why not take a free walking tour of Waverly? Go and see where history was made.

Of course, the legacies, histories + stories of African Americans extend far beyond February 28. Explore different narratives throughout 2018 and beyond with a free online walking tour, a film screening or the newly launched Green Book of South Carolina app. (The app is pretty dang cool, y’all.) And if you have a story you’d like to share, please get in touch. Columbia speaks with many different voices and we want to hear them all.

See y’all at the Palladium Society’s Chili Cook-off Saturday (Chloe is judging and we are eating).

–Lois from Historic Columbia + Sam

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